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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500232">hold it tight til it burns your hand</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas'>avosettas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s09e02 The Witch's Familiar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:20:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,068</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500232</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dear god, her head. Her tearstained face and her gigantic eyes are still in the forefront of the Doctor’s mind. </p>
<p>“Today I picked up a gun and pointed it at my best friend in the entire universe.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Twelfth Doctor &amp; Clara Oswin Oswald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>hold it tight til it burns your hand</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>[throws this into ao3] so long and thanks for the migraine</p>
<p>i would have liked to explore some other things - namely, the suffocation + the awful screaming when he's stuck to the wires but it ended up being more focused on clara so maybe i'll write another fic abt this ep. </p>
<p>can be read as whouffaldi (lmao spelling) but its pretty platonic. title from near the end of "the zygon inversion"</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the ordeal on Skaro, it’s a relief that he doesn’t have to hint to Clara that he’d like her to stay on the TARDIS for the night. She just announces she’s going to, leaving no room for argument, and secretly, the Doctor is very, very pleased. </p>
<p>Once her the echoes from her footsteps retreat, he finally lets himself relax at the console. Everything aches, but the palms of his hands are especially painful. They burn as though he’s held them on a stovetop. </p>
<p>The Doctor slumps a bit, finishes setting the coordinates so that the TARDIS will remain in deep space for the time being. Leaning on the console so heavily makes it feel like the skin of his hands are being peeled off, so he pushes himself away with the intent to sleep it off, and instead hisses. </p>
<p>The TARDIS hums worriedly in the back of his mind. His hands <i>are</i> peeling, like a sunburn - bright red where they’d been touching the wires absorbing his own regeneration energy. </p>
<p>She still hums as the Doctor limps down the stairs, circles around the console and goes down the corridor opposite the one Clara disappeared into. On his right, the door to the infirmary appears. </p>
<p>“I’m fine,” he grunts at her, not quite knowing where to direct his glare. Just the extra regeneration energy, he’d wager. If he had to guess, being in contact with his own regenerative energy like that triggered something similar to regeneration sickness, at least in terms of physical effects. </p>
<p>“Or, I’m an idiot.” He does what she wants and gets burn cream and bandages from the infirmary, but doesn’t stop to wrap his wounds. For all he knows, Clara might show up in there, looking for something for her head. </p>
<p>Dear god, her head. Her tearstained face and her gigantic eyes are still in the forefront of the Doctor’s mind. </p>
<p>He reaches his bedroom, much further from the infirmary than he’d like. The TARDIS must be mad that he didn’t stop to patch himself up. He puts the burn cream and the bandages on the vanity and pulls out some pajamas. </p>
<p>“Today I picked up a gun and pointed it at my best friend in the entire universe,” he narrates, stripping himself of clothes covered in Skaro’s dust. He wipes his boots with one hand absentmindedly and groans when it exacerbates the burns there. </p>
<p>He turns back to the medical supplies and catches his own eye in the mirror. </p>
<p>The Doctor hadn’t really been thinking of himself as an old Scotsman with big eyebrows, not yet. Not long enough in this incarnation to be focused on the appearance as a core trait, really. When he saw himself in his mind’s eye it was still as the bloke with the bowtie and the chin - he spent 300 years in a tiny village with that face. </p>
<p>He looks tired, mostly. </p>
<p>“Shame,” Clara had said in Essex. He pulls his pajamas on and ignores the mirror. </p>
<p>He tells himself, “I am not a good man, or a bad man.” </p>
<p>It hurts when he sits on the bed. He still ignores the medical supplies and the TARDIS still hums. </p>
<p><i>I knew exactly what you were doing and I let you do it.</i> No. </p>
<p>Maybe he knew what Davros was doing - the Doctor can’t really think anymore. Too focused on the pain in his hands. He opens the jar of burn cream, finally, and pours globs of it onto his palms. Sits there on the edge of the bed with his palms open to the ceiling. </p>
<p>He did it because it was <i>kind</i>, and compassionate and right. The Daleks in the sewers had been what saved him and Clara, but god knows the Doctor had thought he was dead the moment he realized Colony Sarff had hidden itself amongst the wires. </p>
<p>“Doctor?” </p>
<p>He looks up. A picture of… well, something, certainly, sitting hunched over on the edge of his bed with his hands open on his lap, staring into space. “Clara.” </p>
<p>“Are you alright?” Just at her temple there are two small bruises, one on each side. Where the nanotechnology from the Dalek casing had been put in and then ripped out. </p>
<p>When he doesn’t answer, bends down a bit to be at eye level. “Doctor?” </p>
<p>“I’m sorry, for today.” The Doctor says, taking her face in his hands. Clara flinches, and so does he. And then she laughs. </p>
<p>“You’ve got burn cream all over your hands, Doctor,” she says, sitting beside him. The bed dips under her weight and the bandages roll toward her. “It’s cold.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry.” </p>
<p>“Give me your hands,” Clara says, and he places them in her lap wordlessly, staying silent as she reapplies the burn cream and covers them. “What happened?” She looks up at him. “You didn’t try to cook again, did you?” </p>
<p>“Apparently,” he replies with a sigh. “Being in prolonged contact with ones own regeneration energy <i>burns</i>.” </p>
<p>“I never did hear what happened with that.” </p>
<p>“I was suffocated by snakes, tricked by an old enemy into resurrecting the Daleks, and I nearly killed you.”</p>
<p>“Arson, murder, and jaywalking,” Clara jokes.Then silence, and she looks away for a minute, before she says again, “Doctor.” </p>
<p>“Yes?” </p>
<p>“I thought - I thought you were going to kill me, today.” When the Doctor looks back at her, her eyes are shut tight.</p>
<p>“...When I thought that Dalek had killed you, I thought I was going to kill it, too,” he confesses. </p>
<p>“Tell me, really, what happened to you today,” Clara asks. He snorts a bit, because it sounds so teacher-y. </p>
<p>He tells her the bare minimum. Stealing Davros’s chair, being suffocated and subdued by Colony Sarff. Tells her about the only other chair on Skaro, just for laughs. </p>
<p>About the sunrise. </p>
<p>“I’m a fool in a box, trying to teach compassion to people who can’t or won’t learn it,” he finishes quietly. </p>
<p>“...You’re a good man, though, I think.” The Doctor looks up, meets Clara’s eyes. Big and brown, and absolutely sincere. “Only a very, very kind person would do something like that for their worst enemy, Doctor.” </p>
<p>“It nearly cost you your life.” </p>
<p>“And you all of yours,” she retorts. “You can make it up to me by getting me some painkillers - that nanotech gave me a headache.” </p>
<p>“It <i>was</i> literally wired into your brain,” he huffs a bit with laughter. “Thank you, Clara.”</p>
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